Sunday, 6 December 2020

Remembering 14 Women

"On Dec. 6, for the 31st year in a row, Canada will pause and remember one of the most horrifying tragedies in our modern history, when a misogynist killer took the lives of 14 young women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. He took their lives because they were women."

Elizabeth Renzetti, Globe and Mail. December 5, 2020.



All the Rage


There are two rooms

one with men writing charts

arguing over what is right and wrong

their voices rising over one another

coming through gaps in the window

where scribes wait patiently for the news

—it is their job to make sense of the noise

turn it into a narrative we can understand


and the other room where polished rocks

are inserted into charms for good luck

where no human voice can rise above  

conveyors fed by thin hungry women

hoping the floor manager does not

take a fancy to their buttocks and demand

they follow him into the closet


where the bully gets to thrust his hard

into the lives of his victims

confident the victim will be blamed

until we stop buying these little charms

for those we love.


(Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet. Ekstasis 2020.)

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